People have been asking for months what Nick Sirianni’s role is as the Eagles’ ‘CEO’ head coach. After a very bizarre six weeks to open the 2024 NFL season, it appears that his job is to be the team’s official lightning rod.
We learned a little bit about Sirianni’s penchant for taking responsibility for mistakes, and issues that weren’t actually his, last year. In late-December, against the Seahawks, Jalen Hurts and A.J. Brown got a bit too creative on a deep ball attempt that ended up sealing the team’s loss. Afterwards, Sirianni said that it was his call because he had hoped Brown would draw a defensive pass interference call.
The head coach was pretty heavily criticized for the explanation, because leaving a game-deciding play up to drawing a penalty is ridiculous. But Brown eventually took ownership of the mistake and admitted the truth about how that play came to be, while vocalizing his appreciation and support of the head coach not throwing players under the bus.
The spiraling that started the last seven weeks of the 2023 season continued through the first quarter of the 2024 season. But as it became more obvious that it was much of the same, Sirianni started randomly admitting bad plays calls and decisions were ones that he made, not offensive coordinator Kellen Moore — the actual playcaller. The head coach admitted that every now and then on offense, and on defense, he’ll overrule a playcall or make a suggestion, and those don’t always work out.
As much flack as Sirianni gets, it also seems unlikely that every really questionable play call in games are at his direction. These admissions continue to mount, and it now seems more likely that he’s falling on the sword to divert the criticism away from his coordinators and players.
That’s honorable and all, but when you mix that behavior with him shaving his head, yelling at Eagles fans, and bringing his kids to a very odd post-game press conference, it also appears that the weight of the world is getting too heavy for him to carry.
Chauncey Gardner-Johnson talked after the Browns game about how much is thrown at the Eagles head coach, but says the players love playing for him.
“Everybody doubts [Sirianni]. The people that don’t doubt him, is us. I don’t think you guys know how much shit he takes on the daily, and we gotta back him up for it. I’m just proud that he’s my coach, and no one else is my coach.”
The players have to know that, even though they respect Sirianni, if the product on the field doesn’t improve, their lightning rod is probably going to be looking for a new job sooner rather than later.
